Page 203 - Gobierno ivisible

Date: 4/5/2011 Page: 203 of 237

The Voice spends $22,000,000 a year. Forty percent of its programming is aimed at Communist countries. (In
West Berlin, a huge 300,000-watt station called RIAS -- Radio in the American Sector- -- broadcasts around the
clock to East Berlin and East Germany. It is said to be under the USIA.) In 1963 work was completed on a
gigantic transmitter complex at Greenville, North Carolina, giving the Voice the most powerful long-range
broadcasting station in the world.

From all this, it should be obvious that news and propaganda broadcasts across national boundaries to other
nations, particularly behind the Iron Curtain, are among the mechanisms of United States foreign policy. On the
face of it, therefore, it would seem logical that the United States Government could scarcely allow a competing
organization to broadcast, as it pleased, material that might affect relations between governments, incite to revolt,
or even involve the United States in military action. It did not seem likely, in other words, that it could allow a
"private" broadcasting organization to conduct the foreign policy of the United States.

Consequently, lying ominously just below the surface of the various inquiries into RFE's role in the Hungarian
revolt was the larger question of whether the United States Government had erred in permitting RFE to broadcast
any degree of encouragement to the Hungarians that could not be backed up by U.S. military assistance.

However, the post-Hungary inquiries were not conducted in these terms. To do so would have opened up the
entire sensitive question of whether and/or to what extent RFE received policy guidance, funds and direction from
the CIA and the State Department.*

The charges against Radio Free Europe began in Moscow and soon spread to the free world, where they were
picked up by Freies Wort, the organ of West Germany's Free Democratic Party. They were aired further when
three revolutionary leaders who had escaped from Hungary said at a press conference in Bonn, on November 19,
that RFE had broadcast "more than the troth." On November 29 Anna Kethly, the Hungarian Social Democratic
leader who had escaped to the West, dealt RFE another blow when she said of its broadcasts: "The intentions
were good but the results were not always happy."

In New York, RFE countered by calling Miss Kethly's statement "utterly without foundation and wholly
incorrect." A spokesman said broadcasts promising Western military aid to Hungary were the work of a
"Communist radio located in East Germany. These Communist programs were broadcast in the name of Radio
Free Europe."

There were then three inquiries into RFE's role. The West German Government set up a commission to study the
charges (since RFE was headquartered in Munich on West German soil) RFE turned over to it three miles of tape
containing all its broadcasts to Hungary before, during and after the revolt.

On January 25, 1957, Chancellor Konrad Adenauer reported the results of this inquiry at a press conference.
Charges that RFE had promised the Hungarians armed assistance by the West "do not correspond with the facts,"
he said. "Remarks, however, were made that were subject to misinterpretation. The matter has been discussed and
personnel changes have resulted. I believe we can consider the matter closed for the time being."

Adenauer's report seemed internally contradictory. On the one hand, it found the charges to be incorrect. On the
other hand, it said there had been a shake-up at Radio Free Europe.

A second inquiry was conducted by a special committee of the Council of Europe, an organization of Western
governments formed in 1949 to deal mainly with social problems. In its report on April 27, 1957, the committee
said the charge that RFE had promised "military aid from the West was proved to be without ground." But it said
one RFE news broadcast "could easily have led to misunderstandings."